


> 



( 



peRnuli(e* 
pHSJ 



WiraOWINGS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 



REVOLUTIONARY BROADSIDES. 
No. II. 




WINNOWINGS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 



REVOLUTIONARY BROADSIDES. 

No. II. 



250 copies printed. 



An Address to the Good Peo- 
ple of Ireland, on behalf of 
America, October 4th, 1778. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 



EDITED BY 



PAUL LEICESTER FORD. 



BROOKLYN, N. Y. : 

Historical Printing Clui;. 

1891. 



3,7 S 790. 



^. 



vi 



NOTE. 

In 1778, when the dissatisfaction of 
Ireland with the English system of 
restrictive commerce and manufactures 
was assuming serious proportions, 
Franklin, with his natural shrewdness, 
endeavored to turn it to America's 
advantage. In the following address 
he pointed out that the United Colonies 
were not merely fighting for constitu- 
tional, but for commercial liberty as 
well, and that it was the interest of the 
Irish to make common cause with the 
Americans. 

This address was probably printed 
on Franklin's private press at Passy, 
and a large number of the broadside 
were put on board a Dutch smuggler, 
(i. e. French) at Brest to carry to Ireland. 
5 



Here they were discovered by an En- 
glish privateer, whose commander de- 
livered them to the captain of His 
Majest)^'s ship the Portland, by whom 
they were forwarded to the Lords of 
the Admiralty. They thus became 
part of the files of the Admiralty office, 
being transferred with these to the 
Public Record office. 

This address has hitherto escaped 
notice, and is not printed in any of 
the editions of Franklin's works. 
Though the conditions have some- 
what changed from the time when we 
needed help from this source, it is 
nevertheless of interest and historic 
value. 

Paul Leicester Ford. 

97 Clark Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



TO TIE GOOD PEOPLE OF IRELAND, 



The misery and distress which your 
ill-fated country has been so frequently 
exposed to, and has so often expe- 
rienced, by such a combination of 
rapine, treachery and violence, as 
■would have disgraced the name of 
government in the most arbitrary 
country in the world, has most sin- 
cerely affected your friends in America, 
and has engaged the most serious at- 
tention of Congress ; the Ministry of 
Britain have seen the extreme mean- 
ness and folly of the attempt to estab- 
lish a supreme authority in Parliament, 

7 



8 

as their venal scribblers had endeav- 
oured to define it, exempt from 
question and controul, appeal or re- 
striction ; but it is evident to all the 
world, that such doctrine is incompa- 
tible with every idea of a civil consti- 
tution ; for all compacts, bills of right, 
nay, the solemn obligation of their 
King to govern according to the 
statutes in Parliament agreed on, and 
the laws and customs of the same, 
would have been all nugatory trum- 
pery, were such a supremacy admitted • 
for this supreme authority, having no 
rule or law to direct its operations, or 
limit its power, it must necessarily 
become arbitrary and absolute ; for 
ceasing to be a government by force, 
and it will appear fully evident that 



9 

this unnatural war, in which we have 
been unavoidably engaged, has been 
begun and supported for no other 
purpose than to establish this supreme 
or arbitrary power, for they are in- 
dividually the same; nor is it in the 
power of sophistry to draw a line 
of separation; the flimsy and con- 
tradictory speech of Lord North, 
introductory to his conciliatory mot- 
tion, furnishes the fullest convic- 
tion on this point. He says, ''before 
the war broke out he offered a con- 
ciliatory proposition. The ground 
upon which he made it was, that it 
was just the colonies should contiibute 
to the support of government." And 
almost in the same breath he says, 
" he thought it necessary to shew the 



10 

colonies we were not fighting for tax- 
ation, for he never thought taxation 
would be beneficial to us." He further 
says, **he never proposed any tax; his 
maxim was to say nothing about 
America, neither to propose or repeal 
laws, neither to advance nor recede, 
but to remain in total silence." His 
Lordship, I hope, will excuse me, if I 
presume to look beyond the acknow- 
ledged indolence of his disposition, to 
explain the stupor of a first minister, 
and the case is very obvious ; for as 
soon as their five regiments should 
have completed the conquest of Amer- 
ica, it should lie, with the lives and 
properties of its inhabitants, at the 
mercy of the conqueror's sword. The 
very names of assemblies, conventions, 



II 

or charters, those odious appendages 
ot democratical power, should be fin- 
ished, and the tyrant's fiat should 
henceforth become the law of the land : 
and hence sprung the torpedo that 
benumbed the minister's faculties. 

His Lordship says, his proposition 
was misinterpreted or misunderstood, 
and was rendered suspicious by a 
supposition of a variety of cases ; the 
Congress treated it as unreasonable 
and insidious, and rejected it. War 
began, and his intention was from the 
beginning, at the moment of victory, 
to propose the same proposition in 
terms obviating all the misrepresenta- 
tions and misunderstandings concern- 
ing it. Here it is confessed, that this 
wise and virtuous administration, at 



12 

every hazard, and at a certain expense, 
has almost annihilated public credit, 
have been looking for victory which 
has never come, and I trust never will 
come, and which, if it did, must have 
been accomplished by the murder of 
fellow-citizens, sooner than clear their 
own propositions oftheir ambiguity and 
suspicion. And what deprives them 
of the colour of excuse for the horrid 
barbarities of the war, the city of Lon- 
don, in the most respectful language, 
petitioned the throne to declare clearly 
and explicity before the war com- 
menced, what they wished to have 
done on the part of America — but all 
to no purpose; they would not, they 
dare not declare their true object. The 
solemn appeal was made, and, for the 



13 

honor of virtue, the comfort of human 
nature, and the terror of oppression, 
it will be indelibly recorded in the 
historic page, that a few virtuous 
citizens could effectually resist the 
most vigorous efforts of the most 
powerful tyranny, and thereby estab- 
lish the freedom of the western world 
for ever. To arrive at power, Gusta- 
vus like, by a bold effort of courage, 
proves at least the existence of one 
virtue, at the same time that we detest 
the treachery ; but to sacrifice the 
public treasure, to devote every effort 
of rapacious taxation, and the fruits of 
an ever-growing excise, to this idol of 
madness and folly, to establish a sys- 
tem of venality, by which the price of 
every man's integrity and abilities was 



14 

to be determined; to stipulate to the 
precise condition of which he shall 
treacherously betray the interest of 
his country, and violate every obliga- 
tion of private friendship and public 
virtue ; to beat down every fence to 
honor and principle, to destroy the 
very bond and frame of civil society, to 
make the pillage of property the means 
to accomplish the plunder of liberty, 
and to drive the people into all the 
miseries of a civil war, in pursuit of 
this dream of power, are instances of 
such determined depravity as are not 
to be described even in the language 
of a country where new villiany adds 
to the catalogue of crimes almost every 
day. The perfect similarity of the 
declaratory act of supremacy, and that 



15 

relating to your country, viz. That 
Ireland should be subordinate and de- 
pend on the imperial crown of Great- 
Britain, is very obvious ; but this 
declaration ex parte can avail nothing, 
at the same time that it furnishes the 
most incontestable and decisive proofs 
that no such subordination or depen- 
dence was ever understood before, or 
there would have been no necessity 
for such an act. 

The navigation act, which has been 
framed for the sole purpose of securing 
to the British subjects all the advan- 
tages to be derived from the commerce 
of their own settlements, has by sub- 
sequent acts been framed into the most 
odious and impolitic monopoly that 
could be devised ; creating local dis- 



i6 

tinctions and commercial schisms, giv- 
ing privilege to one set of subjects to 
the injury of others, and operating on 
all the indicted provinces as an oppres- 
sive tax, comprehending all the taxes 
of Britain, however variously modified 
or compounded. And we wish to 
have it for-ever fixed on your minds, 
that by a monopoly of trade every 
pretence to internal taxation is given 
up ; for were you even without a con- 
stitution of your own, and as dependent 
as usurpation has endeavoured to make 
you, the monopoly of your trade is 
more than a full and equitable com- 
pensation for all other taxes; and it 
will not appear paradoxical to futurity, 
that the rise and fall of the British 
empire have been owing to this act. 



and the engine by which the wise pol- 
itician, who framed it, desicrned to 
wind up and connect the British in- 
terest all over the world, we have seen 
employed as the wheel on which Brit- 
ish liberty and grandeur have disgrace- 
fully expired. 

The anticipation of public revenue 
has fixed the crisis of Britain, the 
labour of their people for all succeeding 
generations being engaged to pay the 
interests of their public debts. I can- 
not suppose it an unfair deduction to 
say they are all born in a state of 
slavery, for an obligation to work for 
any other purpose than one's own 
advantage, is truly the condition of a 
slave, and every new tax adds a link 
to the chain. But even in this gloomy 



i8 

picture there is a dawn of hope; all 
bodies are capable of refraction to a 
certain degree, beyond which it is im- 
possible to expand them ever so little 
without absolute destruction. It is 
evident to all the world that the nerv^es 
of public credit in England are on the 
rack of extension, and the dreadful 
explosion must follow of course ; and 
can it be supposed that the system of 
weakness and folly, that has so long 
usurped the name of constitution, can 
survive the shock ; and their people 
may yet hope to see a vigorous young 
one grow out of the ruins of the old? 
I have in my commission to repeat 
to you, my good friends, the cordial 
concern that Congress takes in every 
thing that relates to the happiness of 



19 

Ireland ; they are sensibly affected by 
the load of oppressive pensions on you r 
establishment; the arbitrary and illegal 
exactions of public money by King's 
letters ; the profuse dissipation, by 
sinecure appointments with large sal- 
aries, and the very arbitrary and im- 
politic restrictions of your trade and 
manufactures, which are beyond ex- 
ample in the history of the world, and 
can only be equalled by that illiberal 
spirit which directs it, and which has 
shown itself so abundantly in petitions 
from all parts of their islands, and in 
the debates in their House of Com- 
mons, when you had been lately 
amused with the vain hope of an ex- 
tension of your trade, and which were 
conducted with such temper and Ian- 



20 

guage as might be supposed to suit 
their copper-coloured allies in Amer- 
ica, but must fix a stain on the char- 
acter of a civilized nation for ever. 

When I had the pleasure of residing 
in your capital some years ago, it gave 
me pain to observe such a debility and 
morbid languor in every department 
of your government, as would have 
disgraced anarchy itself; the laws are 
too weak to execute themselves, and 
vice and violence often reign with 
impunity ; and even the military with 
you seem to claim an exemption from 
all civil restraint or jurisdiction, and 
individuals are forced to trust to them- 
selves for that security and protection 
which the government of the country 
can no longer afford them. We con- 



21 

gratulate you however on the bright 
prospect which the western hemisphere 
has afforded to you, and the oppressed 
of every nation, and we trust that the 
Hberation of your country has been 
effected in America, and that you 
never will be called on for those pain- 
ful though necessary exertions, which 
the sacred love of liberty inspires, and 
which have enabled us to establish our 
freedom for ever. 

We hope the political Quixotes of 
Great-Britain will no longer be able to 
disturb the peace and happiness of 
mankind, and which Providence has 
permitted perhaps to show the mons- 
trous abuse of power ; yet lost to all 
public virtue as they are, we wish they 
may turn from their wickedness and 



22 

live; and we doubt not the noble ef- 
forts of America will meet the full 
approbation of every virtuous Briton, 
when they shall be able to distinguish 
between the mad pursuits of govern- 
ment and the true interest of their 
people. But as for you, our dear and 
good friends of Ireland, we must cor- 
dially recommend to you to continue 
peaceable and quiet in every possible 
situation of your affairs, and endeavour, 
by mutual good will to supply the 
defects of administration. But if the 
government, whom you at this time 
acknowledge, does not, in conformity 
to her own true interest, take off and 
remove every restraint on your trade, 
commerce and manufactures, I am 
charged to assure you, that means 



f 



23 

will be found to establish your free- 
dom in this respect, in the fullest and 
amplest manner. And as it is the ar- 
dent wish of America to promote, as 
far as her other engagements will per- 
mit, a reciprocal commercial interest 
with you, I am to assure you, they 
will seek every means to establish and 
extend it ; and it has given the most 
sensible pleasure to have those instruc- 
tions committed to my care, as I have 
ever retained the most perfect good 
will and esteem for the people of Ire- 
land. And am, with every sentiment 
of respect, their obedient and humble 

servant, 

Benjamin Franklin. 

Versailles, October 4, 1778. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 699 924 



X 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




